True, but Sims 3 paid the price for only being 32 bit and trying to pull off an open world. --- I'm more then a little worried that as Sims 4 grows it's currently livable loading screens will bloat and bloat much like Sims 3 did.

The Sims 3 all the way... Open world, being able to download incredible fan built worlds and play ANYWAY I want too. If I'm feeling a medieval story today, I can play that way, if I'm feeling a Gothic tale of lust and death I can play that way, if I want to live in a small rural country and be a family of just farmers, I can play that way... The Sims 3 gives you CHOICES, upon choices. I like to play my worlds the way I want to play them, and I'm not a huge dollhouse player, meaning my sims interact with their world constantly.

The Sims 4 is not my cup of tea at all. No open world, no CAS, life stages taken away or poorly executed, in other words... Choices have been taken from me with that game. So I don't play it.

I really enjoyed Sims 1 and 2 (Also Sims for PS2) for what they were and have probably had my best moments playing those games. Part of that however was attributed to being younger and having more time on my hands. Sims 3 most fits what I want out of SIms game. Sims 3 (WIth NRAAS Mods) is near perfection for how I liked to play, the only problem is the lag and slowness. While I did like some things about Sims 4 it was generally was boring to me and I really missed the open world, that's also the main reason why I have a hard time going back to SIms 2.

Overall Ranking (Note all my games were as heavily modded as I could get them)

Caveat:
I don't think it's fair to compare TS4 as it stands right now against the prior series as those are complete. Plus, I only ever tried the free trials (CAS & in-game). That doesn't mean I'm not allowed to hold an opinion on it, however.

The Sims - no question this was an amazing game when it came out. I played it constantly and was absolutely thrilled each time a new EP added things to make it even better. That being said, I didn't touch it once after I got TS2.

The Sims 2 - IMO the crown jewel of The Sims franchise. In comparison to the original, this game was light-years ahead. The genetics, the aging, the complex personalities (personality points + interests + aspirations + turn-ons/off + hobbies), the emotions, the attraction system. The new Uni, Seasons, OFB, Freetime EPs. This game also had challenge (fears, sickness, chance of failure when using aspiration rewards improperly, difficulty in finding/becoming alt life states). Heck, I even made it harder by modding out a lot of things (inheritance, free private school, free uni, etc.) because I still found it too easy. The modders for this game were amazing. They deserve so much credit. Things started to get a little iffy towards the end (BV's securom mess; the weird addition of witches into AL, which I guess is better than nothing; the introduction of DLC). Yes, the recolor thing was a drag but at the time we didn't know better.
Also there were several annoyances never fixed by EA (the firstborn glitch, ARGH!), including some game-breaking ones (deleting sims, moving sims between hoods). At the end of its run, I'd give it a solid A-. Looking at it post-TS3, I'd downgrade that to a B+.
I played this game religiously for almost 10 years. I still play it occasionally just nowhere near as much as I did before.

The Sims 3

- This game had some great improvements. My faves: professions (ie, gardener, fisherman), the different work capabilities (meet coworkers, suck up to boss, etc.), the expanded skill system (creativity being broken up into its logical components, the deletion of the useless cooking skill, charisma being useful, the addition of so many other neat skills like martial arts, photography, etc.), the awesome expanded cooking and gardening system, the ability to turn off types of weather/supernaturals, the ability to adjust sims' age ranges, uni being available for everyone. Heck, I thought laundry even was cool. I don't give a flying fig about Story Progression and never, ever played with it on so I won't comment on it. Moodlets were fine. Took me a while to get used to them. CASt was a great idea but the cost was lots took a long time to load (not a big deal IMO). The open world was beautiful and fun to explore, but the cost was near empty lots. Argh. Why should I bother going to a lounge if it's only going to be my sim and three others?

The main problem I had with TS3 was all these super-cool systems were implemented and yet the sims themselves SUCKED ASS. Because: 1) They were hideous clones. Yes, I found mods to fix slider ranges and make sims that weren't all clones but my worlds were still full of icky EAxis clones. Blech. 2) They were emotionless robots. The trait system was not an improvement. It was a good idea, but did not give TS3 sims anywhere near the depth of TS2 sims, especially when a lot of the traits were lame things like likes dogs, likes heat. Yes, there were interesting traits, in theory, but not in practice ('take evil shower,' 'take extreme nap' ). It seemed like no matter what traits they had, a lot of them acted the same. 3) They didn't have interesting relationships. I played 3 sims in one household for what was surely like 100 years in sim time and THEY NEVER BECAME FRIENDS. This was because they didn't interact with each other autonomously all that much (I always play freewill on). Sure, there were a lot more interactions added (based on traits and sometimes skills) but they removed one of the best parts of TS2: unbalanced relationships.

Which brings me to my next point. All the awesome features of the previous series that EAxis removed, therefore dumbing down this game: sickness (I don't think this was in TS3, excepting the mummy curse which took a whopping 14 days to do any damage ), genetics, difficult toddlers, sims eating meals together, chance of failure using aspiration rewards (I HATED that the rewards in TS3, like steel bladder, were permanent. Ugh.), fears, items costing money (clothes, cell phones). Not to mention the immersion-breaking vehicle, baby bottle, baby diaper animations. And I could care less if my sim spends their day at work in a rabbit hole. I don't want to see that. It was bad enough having to watch my sim sit through their uni lecture. But when I'm playing them outside of work, I want to follow them inside a shop, restaurant, movie theatre, etc. Time was also a weird factor. Sims would take forever to cook a meal, take a shower, change into their clothes, yet could eat said meal in five real-time seconds. Overkill: zombies, rain, paparazzi. Stupidly-implemented systems: inappropriateness, celebrity/shaming, attraction. Yeah, you can bet I downloaded a lot of mods to try and fix things. The DLC was laughably overpriced (not to mention often broken). There was no easy quick way to make a new world, a la TS2, though TS3 might appeal more to builders thanks to CASt and basements and cool WA world items. Overall I'd give TS3 a C. If TS2 didn't exist, it might get a solid B. But TS2 did exist and TS3 removed/dumbed-down so many features that made TS2, for me, a much more enjoyable game. (I played TS3 for less than a year. I found family play so absolutely dull that I tried to complete some of the in-game 'challenges.' After I finished all the WA quests, completed an extra-large gem collection, and raised every possible plant to perfection I dropped TS3 and haven't cared to touch it since.)

TS4 is lacking way, way too many things for me to care right now. They still lost all the things that made TS2 great but then they took out some of the best improvements from TS3 (CASt and open world). So WTF, EA? Their selling feature, emotionz, are all over the place. CAS is interesting but definitely needs more/expanded slider options. It's nice they're adding back some missing features for free, but they still haven't added a single thing I want in my game (toddlers, unchained babies, distinguishable teens, expandable worlds/ability to make more worlds). And I thought traits were bad in TS3? Now sims only get 3! That's a well-rounded personality right there. I weep for this franchise. I was hoping TS4 would be TS2 (I mean the sims look awesome!) with all the upgraded, good features from TS3. Instead, it removed the good features of both. Argh.

Actually, I'll disagree with you on the number of Traits ... I've personally found that the Traits in 4 tend to be "broader" then the ones in 3 and honestly I can do more with three traits then I could with the larger number of narrower traits prior. (But then again I personally believe that when they redo the University EP they'll add additional trait slots as a reward, and that "Adults" probably should get a bonus trait in order to take the focus away from the YAs ... just a little.) --- Of course, I'm really hoping that the official traits remain broad and useful across a wide varity of Sims, no more "likes hot weather" or similar weak filler traits. (I DO want Lucky/.Unlucky back though ... I really miss Unlucky's "immortality" bonus.)

*EDIT*

Four traits, counting the bonus trait from picking your first goal. (Unless my brain just imploded on itself.)

TS3 for me was never fun to *play* it was fun to create. Creating a sim, decorating a house, modifying a world. I spent one game going through every default townie in Sunset Valley giving every single sim a full on makeover. I was playing TS3 from the beginning, yet not once, ever, in all those years did I play a single family long enough for a teen sim to age up to adult and have a kid of their own. The sims and the gameplay was just so incredibly dull. They had no souls. Sims 3 was a sandbox for creation, and that's it. It wasn't a fun game to actually play.

Sims 2 on the other hand was a hoot and a half. I've played generations and generations in that game, the sims are funny, they actually interact with each other without you forcing them to, and the way they react to the things you tell them to do is hilarious. It really is the crown jewel of the sims series, something most people seem to agree with. And on my windows 8 machine, it actually runs even better than it did on my old 14 year old PC running windows xp. Honestly a great game I can always go back to and have fun with. I remember once doing Pooklet's assylum challenge and letting 8 sims just auto-play in a lot until they died, and it was hilarious! Romances started up, enemies were made, and the last sim standing only won because he had been eating food out of the trash bin. I did the same thing in TS3 and by the end the sims hardly even knew each other. They barely talked, nothing particularly interesting happened, and overall it was a bore. I have yet to try this challenge in the sims 4, but I think it's time may be coming.

The sims 4 in my opinion is better than TS3, but not TS2. I love CAS in the sims 4. All of my sims can be so unique, it doesn't take practice and practice and tons of cc to make a sim not look like a pudding face like ts3, and it has a lot more "slider" options and variety than TS2. Gameplay is worlds better than TS3. The sims actually talk to each other. I'm not entirely sure yet if they actually have distinct personalities, but my athletic sims do pushups all the time and my nerd sims get cranky when they haven't gamed in a while, which counts a bit. I also like the return of one-sided relationships. I had a sim talking and flirting with another sim, and he was her best friend in the entire world and huge romantic interest. Then I had him move in and realized that he barely liked her at all! Dude was just in it for some ta-tas. I also love the cartoony style they adopted. Is it missing stuff? Yeah. Actual teenagers, and Adults for that matter. Toddlers. A variety of careers (but that's around the corner) And I'd also like a slightly larger world, as the two they've given us quite frankly are tiny. I hope they release a CAW tool of some sort eventually, because I'd hate to think for the first time we would have no control over the layouts of neighborhoods.

TS1: The brutal difficulty of just staying alive, let alone making and keeping friends for the careers, ruined it for me.

TS2: The game to play. The challenge was finally balanced. Mods for pretty much every nuisance and unfixed bug. I could really connect with the characters...

TS3: The game to create in, thanks to CASt. Gameplay was much lighter, couldn't really ruin a Sim's life like in TS2, couldn't really connect with them as much...but it looked really good.

TS4: Too linear, too forced-modern, and told-not-showed too much. Ultimately robotic Sims. Ha ha ha...I tried modding it to make it suck less. If only UI modding was easy like regular modding, I could really drill down into what's hurting the game the most...

1/8/2016: New avatar! Pre-censored for EA's approval.3/19/2015: Teens are too close to YAs. EA needs to either shorten the teens, or add preteens and make YAs look older.

Personally I never understood the 'which is better' argument, I like all of the games. I play all of them, including the Stories series and Sims Medieval, it all depends on what mood I'm in. If I'm feeling nostalgic, I play Sims 1. If I want to play a game that allows a lot of infant/toddler/child interactions, I play Sims 2. If I want to play challenges, I use Sims 3. If I want to focus on just the YA and Adult life stages for a good long while, I play Sims 4. And if I want to play something more scripted but none of my other non Sims games are cutting it, I plays one of the Stories series or Medieval. It's all how you look at it, there isn't one that is better than another, they're all different. It's each difference that makes them great, and to me, not really comparable.

Maybe this is the place to once again vent my frustration with TS3? In comparison to TS2, maybe? Nah, I can't do that anymore. Atm, it is not installed, I deleted everything and all having to do with TS3 from my PC - that's how angry I was when last TS3 and I had an ...altercation. But I still love it. I admit, I'm guilty of loving the stupid thing. There. But it is killing me when I play it. Always the same - I stand in awe at first, am mesmerized and overwhelmed with joy that it even exists, and then couple of months into it, it bugs out on me. At that point, having already spent countless hours and days on tweaking it to work properly, I don't have the nerves to deal, so I uninstall it. But I can already see how it will return to haunt me in the future. Because I love the game. Despite the Sims never reaching the level of TS2 Sims, despite it never getting a proper OFB type of EP, etc. Despite the bugs.

TS2. It seems it is here to stay with me for a long time, no matter TS3 or my love/hate, passionate relationship with it. I love TS2 with no reserves - it is the most interesting game ever made imo. It is an experiment of sorts, that's how I see it, and my gameplay always somehow has this experimentation in it. A proper, true, complex sandbox in which I can create stories and challenges with great freedom. This freedom is what I love about TS2, besides its wonderful Sims and that precious EP that brought it all together so nicely - OFB. The open world of TS3 is also precious imo, but this TS2 EP has created the feeling - and the reality - of a community that the open world of TS3, ironically, has never matched. Yes, one of my fav gripes with the silly game.

Unlike TS3, with which I have a passionate love/hate relationship, TS4 has never managed to get me intrigued enough to even try it out. Reasons are many: the price, Origin, 32-bit exe, DirectX9, they all come before even considering the missing content. And the missing content in itself is quite enough to put me into the denial mode. I don't consider that game to be a Sims title, namely. I will only mention Mr. Sausages here, in conclusion. Follow his adventures and the adventures of his counterparts in TS2 and TS3, and you'll get a general picture of the series and the main reason I dislike TS4.

The Sims, the original, was special. The challenge, the humor, the novelty. It was the most surprising game I ever saw - it convinced me that even grown ups can have fun playing "video games", that even I can do it, and with great interest. It was my first game, and it was the first gift that my boyfriend has given me. Quite a special game, and there's no reason to compare it to anything. It will always be loved by me, even if I never again see it or play it in my life.

I have yet to play Sims 4 so can't really pass comment on that.
I very briefly dabbled in Sims 1 before moving on to Sims 2.
I enjoyed the open world aspect of Sims 3 and Create a World feature, which I explored at length, as well as building. The sims themselves however left me slightly indifferent and weren't inspiring enough for me to take a real interest in.
However, despite the loading screens, Sims 2 is the one I keep going back to. I created a lot of families and individual sims in that and for me it's my personal ongoing soap opera which I cannot resist dipping into. It has the right combination of sims customisation together with building ability, and the additional mods I've added to the game to spice it up have brought it to life even more. Even without mods, the humor in that game always made it special.

I still can't get into 4 with no open world and SP. It just doesn't fit my style of play. I'm sure it's a great game if it works with your style of play. I still mostly play 3 and pray for an open world if there's a 5

Is there even anything to discuss? We all now The Sims 2 is superior.
The Sims 1, good back in the day.
The Sims 2 is the best one, and will always be it seems.
The Sims 3 has great customization, but lacks in gameplay.-
The Sims 4 Has better gameplay than TS3 and TS1, but lacks compared to TS2 and also lacks in customization.

Is there even anything to discuss? We all now The Sims 2 is superior.
The Sims 1, good back in the day.
The Sims 2 is the best one, and will always be it seems.
The Sims 3 has great customization, but lacks in gameplay.-
The Sims 4 Has better gameplay than TS3 and TS1, but lacks compared to TS2 and also lacks in customization.

Yeah, some people still preffer TS3 over TS2. And some folk love TS4 more than any of the previous games in series. But it is known that TS2 had more contents than any Sims game until now, and that TS4 failed to deliver same amount of fun as previous games.

Yeah, some people still preffer TS3 over TS2. And some folk love TS4 more than any of the previous games in series. But it is known that TS2 had more contents than any Sims game until now, and that TS4 failed to deliver same amount of fun as previous games.

I agree TS2 has better gameplay in parts, but without (it is getting tiring , yes I know :p) open world and CASt , I am just not interested. For me a next sims, should be built with great customisation ( a la CASt to avoid horrible recolours management) and open world. I see open world and CASt as the base on which the simulation should be built. So you can maybe understand why TS2 and TS4 is just not an option for me anymore.

Sims1 is my first love. I started playing it as an "accident" and immediately fell in love with it. I couldn't be more satisfied when we move from TS1 to TS2. It's a huge leap and almost every change is a good one. I have years of lovely memory playing with TS2.

Those being said, however, I have to say TS3 is my best love so far. Yes it's lacking in some aspects comparing to TS2, but the CASt and open world totall won me over. I tried to play TS2 again recently after EA released the Ultimate collection. I even installed back all the CCs. It is still great, but I constantly miss the opporitunity to explore the world, and to peep into my neighbors' live Oh, and story progression is not perfect in TS3, but still better than nothing. I can't bother to age up all my sim's friends in TS2, and it looks so awkward for my adult sims to have so many kid friends! If only TS4 is a combination of 2 and 3, my Sims life would be complete!

Haven't bought TS4 yet, so cannot put any valid comment. I just don't like what I read about the game and seems like open world would never make a return in this gen, so no plan of playing TS4 so far. But I'm still reading on TS4 site from time to time, just in case I miss something really sweet.

PS: About the performace on TS3: I have a somewhat out-dated computer, bought in 2009 with i5, 8G ram, no SSD, running Win7. I have about 3G CC installed. TS3 does take a long time (about 10 minutes) to load initially, and if going to vacation world, it's another 5 minutes loading. However, once loaded, the game play smoothly with no lag. For all these years, it only crashed 2-3 times, mostly (if not all) mod related. For some reason my TS2 loading time is quite long, like 5 minutes for each loading. I don't know what I did wrong, possibly too many CC (about 3G)?

Is there even anything to discuss? We all now The Sims 2 is superior.
The Sims 1, good back in the day.
The Sims 2 is the best one, and will always be it seems.
The Sims 3 has great customization, but lacks in gameplay.-
The Sims 4 Has better gameplay than TS3 and TS1, but lacks compared to TS2 and also lacks in customization.

There is plenty to discuss as long as people have differing POVs and not every single person that ever lived has the same exact mind as everyone else.

For me, TS2 is NOT superior nor is TS3. I actually hold both games at the same level for different in-depth features/gameplay but the same reason. They are both extremely engaging, IMPROVED from the last base game therefore a step in the right direction. TS is just as entertaining too but in terms of a more developed life simulator it's both TS2/TS3 for me. Both games are limited and lack features/gameplay compared to each other. TS4 was "supposed" to be superior than TS/TS2/TS3 combined yet it's inferior.

TS4 does not have better gameplay than TS3. Of course that is determined by each individual. However it is a fact that TS4 is a downgrade. Doesn't matter how much one might enjoy it, it's still a mostly unwanted and uncalled for downgrade.

TS3 = The most creative freedom of any Sims game to date (Hair - any color - Roots, Tips, Base and Highlights, Eyes - any color, CASt - Clothes, Furniture, Walls, Floors, Objects, etc. No limited presets like TS2. The more options the better to create YOUR vision.)

I like this picture so much. There so many pictures from TS3 early days that had me so excited. In fact looking back on a lot of the old screenshots makes me happy, excited all over again and makes me want to play.

TS3 = Only Sims game to no longer confine Sims to one lot at a time/Open World = NO loading screens
TS3 = A more realistic version of a life simulator by allowing Sims around your household to not only age as well but live life without the player intervening (Excellent features, poor execution, coding/programming though)
TS3 = Although still a RH, the careers/jobs can actually be seen and visited
TS3 = Cars and Bikes
TS3 = Create your own lots if the lots available are boring you
TS3 = More skintones presets PLUS sliders from light to dark
TS3 = Traits...5 max per full grown Sim (Although not as in-depth as it could have been)
TS3 = Main features that are innovative and actually NEW to the Sims series base game compared to the so called S4 that does not have one main innovative feature that was never done before that's actually worthy of The Sims FOUR title (One, Two, Three...What did you forget how to count EA?)

Which one doesn't belong? TS4, lol. TS4 has nothing on TS3/TS2/TS. It's still pretending to be something it's not.

Before I had the sims3, I loved sims2...But when I try to play sims2 know, it's the most boring game I know.

And sims4? It's of the same boringlevel as sims2; specially because it's without CASt and a open world, like the sims2...I can't play it. I feel me jailed when I try it. And all the sims are ugly, (like TS2) and it looks like it's for 8-years-old children.